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Reading this novel was a bewildering and sad experience. John William’s tale of an ex-Harvard drop-out, Will Andrews, a very innocent man in all sorts of way, who is eager for adventure, was almost too overwhelming to bear. I felt often torn by admiration for the minute descriptions of the beautiful sights of the prairie, rivers and streams and the mountainous area nearing Colorado of the trek Andrews undertook to go buffalo hunting with three other men. But then I found it really hard to bear to be told in slow detail how the small group systematically slaughtered a herd of a hundreds or more of buffalo day after day. The detailed description of the agony of the buffalo’s, their blood flying and their subsequent slaughter went on for at least a hundred pages and I often thought of quiting as it was too heartbreaking to read on.

There is no doubt for me that John Williams was a virtuoso author. I had already concluded that years ago when I read his ‘Stoner’. An atmosphere of bitter disappointment obviously prevails in his novels. After reading ‘Stoner’, that terribly sad masterpiece, I swore I would never want to read another novel by Williams again and I should have listened to myself.

Here is a quote at the end of the novel which is so true and heartbreaking and clearly provides Williams’ obviously constant depressive state of mind:

‘Well, there’s nothing,’ McDonald said. ‘You get born and you nurse on lies, and you get weaned on lies, and you learn fancier lies in school. You live all your life on lies, and then maybe when you are ready to die, it comes to you - that there’s nothing, nothing but yourself and what you could have done. Only you ain’t done it, because the lies told you there was something else. Then you know you could of had the world because you are the only one that knows the secret; only then it’s too late. You are too old.’